California lawmakers spent much of this summer grappling with a thorny question: Could the state hand over driver’s license records to a national nonprofit clearinghouse, as federal officials were demanding, without putting more than a million immigrant license holders at risk of being flagged for deportation or targeted by law enforcement?
In the end, worried that state-issued IDs might stop being accepted at airports and federal buildings, legislators voted to let the Department of Motor Vehicles move forward with the data-sharing plan.
What they didn’t realize at the time was that the Trump administration was already pressing the same nonprofit organization for access to millions of driver records — and preparing to use that information for immigration enforcement.
Over the summer, federal officials first requested and then subpoenaed bulk data on commercial drivers from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, known as AAMVA. The Virginia-based nonprofit serves as a central repository for driver information collected by state motor vehicle agencies across the country — the very organization California intends to entrust with all of its driver records by next year.
Those federal demands only came to light last month, after attorneys general from 22 states, including California, sued to stop the subpoena from being carried out.
Now, critics of California’s data-sharing plan are pointing to the episode as proof that their warnings were justified, and they are pushing the state to pump the brakes and reconsider. At stake are difficult questions about how much privacy protection — and how much practical usefulness — the state can offer to its nearly 30 million licensed drivers.
“AAMVA’s behavior with respect to these commercial driver’s licenses gives California compelling reasons not to trust AAMVA to safeguard the much larger number of non-commercial driver’s license records that the DMV plans to upload to AAMVA next year,” said Ed Hasbrouck of the civil liberties organization The Identity Project.
Hasbrouck and other advocates for immigrants and privacy rights say AAMVA waited weeks before alerting California and other member states about the federal request — and that the group initially appeared willing to comply with a bulk data handover.
AAMVA spokesperson Claire Jeffrey would not answer specific questions about the federal demands, saying only that the organization “is working through the challenging circumstances of the data request and now active litigation” and “remains committed to working with all interested parties to navigate competing concerns in this matter.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, which supported the original data-sharing legislation, dismissed the concerns as overstated — much as it did earlier this year when critics first warned that any driver data shared with AAMVA could eventually be swept up in a federal subpoena.
A widening crackdown on immigrant truckers
The push for commercial driver data appears tied to a broader federal campaign targeting non-citizen truck drivers. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration began strictly enforcing English-language proficiency rules in May 2025, and in February of this year it finalized a rule barring immigrants with valid work permits — including asylum seekers, Temporary Protected Status holders and DACA recipients — from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, even though they are legally authorized to be in the country.
Court records show the federal government sought information on 17 million commercial license holders through an Aug. 11 subpoena issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The subpoena described its purpose as “civil immigration enforcement” and demanded names, birth dates, license numbers, states of record and Social Security numbers for every driver in AAMVA’s commercial license database dating back five years. It also instructed AAMVA to keep the subpoena confidential “for an indefinite period of time,” warning that disclosure “will impede the investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law.”
According to court filings, the federal government first approached AAMVA about the commercial license data on June 25. Caught between conflicting obligations to state and federal governments, AAMVA initially indicated it would comply — prompting several states to threaten legal action, arguing that doing so would breach agreements with state DMVs and violate privacy laws.
California has already been sharing commercial license information with AAMVA. Under the funding measure lawmakers approved in June, the DMV plans to begin uploading data for all California license holders, including more than a million immigrants who obtained licenses under a 2013 state law that allows undocumented residents to drive legally. Supporters of the plan, including officials in the DMV and the governor’s office, argued that without it, California could fall out of compliance with the federal REAL ID Act, potentially making state-issued IDs useless at airports and federal facilities.
A sworn declaration from Kristin Triepke, who leads the DMV’s Licensing Policy branch, states that California officials didn’t learn of the federal request for commercial license data until July 23 — when AAMVA’s chief executive emailed the organization’s board. That was 10 days after Newsom signed the legislation authorizing the state’s broader data-sharing plan. AAMVA had signed an agreement with California last year promising not to release commercial driver data without explicit written consent.
In her declaration, Triepke cautioned that turning over driver data to federal authorities could discourage undocumented immigrants from obtaining licenses altogether, which she said could create serious public safety hazards on the road.
In an effort to satisfy California and other member states, AAMVA proposed letting individual state DMVs decide for themselves whether to share commercial license data in bulk with federal authorities, according to court filings. But the Trump administration pushed back hard, with the U.S. Department of Transportation threatening to pull grants and cancel contracts with AAMVA. The Department of Homeland Security then issued its subpoena, asserting that it had the legal authority to obtain records on every commercial license holder nationwide.
On Aug. 21, a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia temporarily halted AAMVA from turning over the data, calling the demand “unlawful.” Judge Anthony Trenga is scheduled to hear arguments Sept. 10 on whether to extend that block with a preliminary injunction.
The outcome of the case could have far-reaching consequences for how much control states retain over driver records once they’re shared with a national database.
Newsom’s office, however, maintains there’s little cause for alarm.
Is California’s data at risk?
Earlier this year, the governor’s communications team accused CalMatters reporters of “manufacturing fear and panic with lies” after the news organization raised concerns that shared driver data could eventually be subpoenaed by federal authorities. Asked to respond now that such a subpoena has surfaced, a Newsom spokesperson drew a distinction between the commercial driver records sought by the Trump administration and the larger pool of data — covering all California license holders — that the state plans to share with AAMVA. Both categories of information are housed by the same organization.
“[They] are separate systems governed by different rules, purposes and legal authorities,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for the governor. “The federal government’s demand at issue in this case is for bulk access to [commercial license] data — not the individual searches that federal officials already conduct — and California has not provided the requested bulk data.”
Crofts-Pelayo pointed out that commercial drivers already must submit Social Security numbers for federal verification as part of the licensing process. One of the central worries about extending data-sharing to non-commercial licenses is that missing or placeholder Social Security numbers — often associated with licenses issued to undocumented immigrants — could be used to single out drivers for immigration enforcement.
Immigrant rights advocates and privacy experts remain unconvinced that California drivers are adequately protected.
Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the subpoena confirms fears raised earlier this year and argued the DMV should pause its data-sharing timeline.
“AAMVA’s response was entirely insufficient, as they took a full month to inform the states of the demand and even contemplated complying with the demand,” she said.
Crofts-Pelayo did not directly answer whether California intends to delay sharing non-commercial driver data with AAMVA while the litigation plays out.
The DMV said it could not weigh in on the legal merits of the Homeland Security subpoena but stressed that the agency “takes seriously its responsibility to protect Californians’ personal information.”
“California has opposed the release of bulk commercial driver information,” said Eva Spiegal, the DMV’s deputy director of public affairs.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, who asked not to be named, told CalMatters in an email: “It is incredibly dangerous for illegal aliens, who often don’t know our traffic laws or even English, to be operating vehicles on America’s roads. We look forward to winning this important argument in court.”
For advocates who raised alarms before the Legislature’s vote in June, the federal subpoena feels like vindication.
“We hate to have to say, ‘We told you so,'” Hasbrouck said. “But in this case, we told you so.”
Original source: CalMatters
